Freedom's Price
by Paladin Starfire
Summary: Post Hogwarts story. The evil is winning the war. For many years, good has hidden in a pocket plane. Harry is part of the resistance, bitter and trouble because of Ginny's capture. But things are about to change.


Freedom's Price  
  
By Paladin Starfire  
  
Part 1  
  
Lunchtime tended to be busy in London, especially on a working day. Today was no exception, especially in the upper class restaurants that tried to emulate the al fresco dining of other historical rich European nations. Court had just been adjourned for the day as the jury considered what penalty should be slammed down upon a drug lord and now both the prosecution and defence were looking for strong coffee and a good meal.  
  
The yuppies in their oh so important jobs strolled down the streets full of themselves just because they wore the best suits and watches, despite the fact that people threw the most reproachful glances as they strode through the crowds. Shoppers were looking eagerly for a good bite to eat after a most delectable session of retail therapy, and they looked even more eager to show of their purchase. Out of all this organized, modernised, capitalized chaos a man strode purposefully, yet nervously down the street.  
  
He skirted the groups of people, and often bumped into passers-by but he didn't care, they were unimportant, and very stupid, ignorant. He glanced around nervously, trying to catch sight of anyone trying to follow him. He passed a police officer whom he stared at him for a few moments, hoping the officer saw nothing but a short, medium build man with his own problems to deal with, and not as the courier of important information.  
  
His black hair was slightly matted, a few bits were missing: chunks of hair he had torn out from frustration. His eyes blood shot from lack of sleep, as the demons of wakefulness refused to surrender him to the demons of slumber.  
  
He bumped into a woman, who tripped and had to lean against a large BMW van parked on the road for assistances. She glared at him again, with a look of distaste and displeasure. He cared not, they were unimportant, he knew something that matter, and they didn't. They had no idea of what was going on out there, in the world they lived in, and who controlled him.  
  
They had power. They had just about everything, yet they still kept him, a slave to the truth, a master of two servants, none willingly. He wanted out of the agreement. His service for silence the deal had read. They wouldn't tell the cops, about the drugs, guns and girls, and wouldn't tell his wife about how his secretary stayed after hours to 'aide him in whatever way she could.' often in ways that his wife would disapprove of. Despite the great motivation, he wanted out. This was supposed to be the last job. After this, the deal was done and he was free. Oh, how he yearned to come back with a gun a spread hem across the floor! However, he couldn't because they had power beyond imagination and could turn humans to stone, or just kill with a flick of that thing! That wand or whatever they called it. He would be out soon though, and it would matter, it would matter, no, it wouldn't.  
  
BANG! The world flipped, a blast of hot air picked him up and slammed him into the hard path of an alleyway, hot chunks of something landing all around him, glass fragment littering the floor, carpeting the ground in a pretty crystal spread. They were coming. He struggled up, and gunfire greeted him. He'd sold guns to people before and he recognized when someone was pouring rounds into someone face. This was the time. The staccato rattle of gunfire was ripping apart the streets, three men, no; two women and a man were holding M16s, emptying their clips into the buildings and crowds around him. One man was holding what looked liked a grenade launcher. Where were they? They he promised to protected him. A hand grabbed him arm. He looked like a yuppie, he wore a suit, black and expensive, Armani by the looks of it, he wore glasses to, wire rimmed black reflective Oakleys, the suit he wore had no tie and finally he wore a leather overcoat, he moved with the swift and efficient grace of a dancer. He pulled the man up and began to drag him down the alley.  
  
"HELP ME!" He virtually screamed at the suited man. The suit's black hair was tussled and messy, face-harden, no emotion playing out on it.  
  
"I'll help us both" he muttered.  
  
Oh well that was good, at least he will do something. The suit looked him straight in the eye through the glasses, and then he heard a click, and saw the knife. A 7.5-inch blade on a small handgrip held menacingly in the suit's hand, and before the helpless man could say anything, the knife came down. Like a direct lightning strike, the knife came down on his chest. He choked, he couldn't scream, it had surely punctured his lung, and the pain was alive, a devilish, sadistic beast eagerly lapping up the poor struggling, dying man. It was too much! The pain ate another part of him and dragged a claw across his chest, the wound was widening, and the suit was cutting him open on the street! He let out a finally gasp and pasted into blackness. He wouldn't regain consciousness.  
  
The street was a battlefield. The two women and man who had opened up were moving quickly forward spraying the area with gunfire, most fell in a heap on the ground as bullet ploughed into the innocent lining the streets, the ultimate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, some were not on the ground, but were up and moving. There were mostly office employees by the looks of it, suits, glasses, all different, but all wore suits and glasses. They moved on the gun people. They gunners were also dressed similarly to the officer workers, wearing trench coats and suits. The employees drew guns, not just pea shooting revolvers either, automatics. Berettas, 92FS 9mm automatics, but these had an unusual red strip down the barrel, surely, that was something special? But the M16s also had this strip, what was going on? The gunners began to retreat at the sign of the employees for some reason. The man levelled his M16 and fired, a long burst, over twenty rounds, but he didn't change clip. The employee he aimed at man and began to move. And time slowed down.  
  
The employee and everything for that matter slowed, the gunman could see the sonic waves of the bullets as they cut eddies through the air, he could see the world around him so slowly, yet he moved normally. So did the employee, he twisted as he walked, his body somehow twisting at an impossible angel, dodging the bullets, leaving them to hit the crowd. The gunmen kept firing, then turned and hurled him self through the window of the shop behind him. Glass shattered around him, slowly falling over his body onto the carpet of the shop, a designer clothing outlet, like tiny sharp snowflakes. He kept moving; somehow, someway he was flying backwards through the glass that still hung in the air, past the counter and into the change rooms, he heard a slow, drawn out scream. As he entered the change rooms he slammed the door shut with his foot, everything still moving slowly. The employee was firing now, bullets following the gunman's path. It hit the door. Time return to normal.  
  
It exploded with the force of a bomb going off. The change room disappeared into a fiery hail of splinters and flaming debris as the bullet detonated itself. There was body no of the gunman; there was nothing there. His body, anything of him, was gone.  
  
He turned and saw the suit leaning over the man in the alley, from right there at the entrance of the shop, where he had stopped he saw what he was doing. He was fiddling with the man chest, with a knife, trying to remove something. He was going for it! The employee walked now in towards him, effortlessly throwing aside a man in his way.  
  
The suit sensed him coming. Despite the employee's great vision, the suit wasn't trying to remove something but holding a small Pocket PC to the now dead mans chest, his open, gouged and mutilated heart next to it. He glanced at the Pocket PC.  
  
Copying time: 30 seconds.  
  
Shit. The PC was transferring information from a small grove on the dead mans heart, the grove was a hiding place for a thin silicon chip, the goal of this exercise in brutality and knife work was to get the information off the chip. Time was running out. If the employee got him before he had the information, then it all had been a pointless waste of time.  
  
Copying time: 25 seconds.  
  
The employee had crossed the road now, walking at a steady unconcerned walk, he had the Beretta out. A car screamed past him, nearly hitting him. He turned, still walking; he lifted and fired once into the windshield, he resumed the walk with an air of invincibility and superiority.  
  
Copying time: 20 seconds.  
  
The suit reached into his coat, and pulled out his own weapon. Square, almost box-ish the 9mm Uzi was feared world wide, small and powerful it was the suits weapon of choice, it carried a red strip too. He gave another fake pulling movement and opened fire. The Uzi shook in the suits hands, but he held it firm, and Time slowed down.  
  
The employee's leg kept moving but the body from the waist up began to twist, slowly moving down on an angle, still parallel to the body. The bullets rippled in the air, when they reached the employee however the past over him, as his torso swung out of the way. He saw the employee's blonde hair disturbed by the airwaves; saw the reflection of the bullets in his glasses. Shit, no slowing this one down.  
  
Copying time: 15 seconds.  
  
Time returned to normal and the employee resumed his walk. The suit could see the smile playing on the employee's face, he neared the alley, and he was about five feet from stepping into the alley. The suit glanced at the PC.  
  
Copying time: 10 seconds.  
  
No! It was all about to end, with this bastard walking up to me! He fired the Uzi again, a long burst but it missed, hitting a parked Toyota near the employee. The suit heard the police sirens now, and even the whirl of a helicopter.  
  
Copying time: 5 seconds.  
  
The employee raised the Beretta. The suit readied himself, so closed he was coming to his goal yet it was all about to end. He began to search himself, looking for an inner quiet, perhaps to stop his demons from overwhelming him, he didn't known, as his mind calmed itself, a tiny flicker was felt at the corner of the void, it was too late though. The gun was raised and in ghastly slow motion, the gun was raised. He gave a final glance at the PC.  
  
Copying time: 2 seconds.  
  
BOOM! The suit saw in slow motion the bullet slow extracting itself from the muzzle the sonic waves cutting the air, the cap clearing the barrel, the shell and then.  
  
BOOM! Another blast rocked the world. The suit barely managed to catch a glance of the sonic trail of another shell impacting into the Toyota and turning it into a ball of flames. The shockwave was huge. The air was hurled outwards in the most unpredictable wave of force and heat. Fragments of the car added to the carpet of demolished part left behind by the van. The bullet from the Beretta was thrown off course, the round caught in the massive force of the blast, the employee thrown from his feet into the brick wall of a large retail outlet that made up the other side of the alley.  
  
The suit couldn't believe his luck; he glanced at the PC,  
  
Copying Complete.  
  
As clouds of flames began to fill the air, time slowed again as the suit embraced the void in the corner of his mind, and let the power of nothingness consume him.  
  
His feet left the ground, as he leapt for the wall of the retail outlet, aiming for a small glass panel, barely enough to fit a large dog into, nevertheless a human being. The employee saw the move and was rising from his feet, when the suit, Uzi still in hand, slowly pushing through the air lifted the gun and fired at the stationary employee. He didn't move. 9mm rounds crashed into his chest, lifting him off his behind and back into the wall, splattering his organs onto the bricks behind him, his shirt ripped and stained with blood as the suit kept the trigger depressed, easily emptying more the fifty rounds into his torso, yet the clip kept going.  
  
The suit felt his shoulder hit the glass, and stopped firing, he felt the rest of his body crash through the glass. Small, deceptively harmless chunks of fairy like glass cut his jacket and suit, it went through his hair cutting his scalp and ears, he slowly curved his body over the sill as he went further and further through the glass, time still slowed as he let the void extend from his mind, his back clear the sill, then his knees. He twisted in the air now in preparation for landing amongst the TVs and stereos in the store. His feet cleared the sill, he was in the twirling in mid air now, like a commando roll taught to school age children he rolled onto his back then onto his feet as he crashed into the merchandise.  
  
Time rectified itself as he released the void.  
  
The suit ran, feet pounding the carpeted electronics section of the store, he dodge customers, and slamming into a VCR stand, sending it crashing into a store assistant, he heard the cried of the customers, the footsteps of the security guards and the screams of the PA for the security to get the vagrant thief. The suit did a quick skidding turn into the furniture sections and ran for the "Staff Only" door leading to the basement supply room. He kicked the door in as guard turned into the same aisle to follow him. He leaped the concrete steps, miraculously avoiding plastering his head into the low ceiling, the suit reached a landing leading off to the deliveries and kept descending, moving down in the maintenances section. He reached the steel mesh door with the red sign reading: danger no entry. He sprayed the padlock with the Uzi, unconcern of a ricochet hit. The door opened, and a puffing security guard rounded the final flight of stairs. The suit popped the clip in exchange for one with a peculiar red stripe down the side.  
  
He enter the maintenances section, and narrowly missed hitting his head on a water pipe, the room was full of oddly angled pipes, cables and boilers all in a dimly light environment. He jumped a fallen pipe and brushed aside some wires before seeing his target, the far wall. Covered in dust and slowly cracking it was an accident waiting to happen, an accident that the suit was about to cause.  
  
He lifted the Uzi and fired a single round. It cleared the barrel with a resounding boom, and as he heard the yell of the panting security guard that he was trapped, it found its mark on the wall. It appeared to just leave a nasty hole in the wall, but then it exploded, fiery tentacles tearing aside the weak brick and concrete, throwing up a huge cloud of dust and rubble. Through the misty ruins, the suit charged. He jumped over fallen piles of concrete, over a pile of bricks and through the breached wall, tripping over a fallen pillar of some kind he slammed into a wall. He glanced up, it was the wall of a small room, it housed a few brooms, a cleaning trolley, fire hose but nothing of importance, he ran for the door. He delivered a resounding flying kick that tore the door from it hinges and spilled white light through the glasses. The suit closed his eyes and went through the portal. He opened his eyes as he hit the smooth titled floor. He glanced around, and found he was in the underground, a recently renovated section by the looks of it. The floor was tiled white, as was the walls emblazoned with adds for various nonessential things, the lights were long industrial strength white cathode lamps, and directly to his left was the platform.  
  
No train was there at present, but he could hear one coming, and he saw down through the crowds the rails on the darkened unimproved track way that it was near, the rails were shaking. He ran for them, elbowing aside passers by, throwing aside anyone in his way as he tensed himself for the jump onto the rails. He turned to check he wasn't being followed but to his disappointment, he was just in time to see the same employee he had spread across the wall jump with him trying to catch him. His suddenly arrival and escape from death didn't seem to worry the suit as he leaped. The employees arms began to closed on his legs as he clear the crowd's heads, a few glanced up and screamed, women recoiled and men locked shocked, not just at an apparently suicidal man throwing himself from the platform, but at the apparently dead employee. His shirt and jacket were ripped, torn and bloody, but bellow was whole and unmolested flesh.  
  
The suit cleared the crowds and retracted his legs twisted in a front flip, he hope he wasn't to late, he had to time the jump and the impact perfectly with the train, he prayed it was right, as he quickly embraced the void to slow everything around him. As the world slowed, as the train roared forwards, delay by the power of the strange void, the employee let out a strangle cry as the air from the train whipped at everything around them and twisted the hair away from the suits forehead.  
  
"You'll never get away from us Potter!"  
  
Harry Potter didn't glance back as he kept going throw the air, into the train's slip stream just as it drew lever, he saw in detail the horrified face of the driver as in slow motion he threw himself into the glass of the driver's compartment. His outstretch arms cracked the glass, scarring his palms and getting the driver in the face, throwing him backwards, unconscious. Harry's head cleared the now destroyed window as glass was whipped about by the slip stream, his torso went through easily and then his legs, he completed this amazing exhibition by executing a final front flip in slow motion and landing face first into the compartments floor. Time returned to normal.  
  
The train roared on, Harry lay stunned on the floor, he had escape, he gotten away! He felt the safe weight of the Pocket PC, the vital information safe in its memory banks. He shifted the driver's body aside and withdrew a strange silver cigar from his jacket. Totally silver, devoid of and making he slammed it into the door of the compartment. It wedge there, little more than half poking out, this half suddenly flicked open like a flower, opening itself to the morning sun. The cigar gave a bright nominally hum and activate, the metal petals of the device glowed blow and air was sucked into the centre of it as a vortex appeared, a blue streaked, twisting whirlpool. In a flash of light, Harry was engulfed by it and vanished. As quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared. The now cigar began to hum erratically, almost dangerous, then popped, disappearing into a small puff of flames and smoke, blackening the door. This all happen while an unconscious driver lay at the on the floor.  
  
Back at the platform, the employee picked himself up as the train roared past, and a let out a blast from its horn, a mocking cry of victory for Potter.  
  
The employee turned his back and walked away.  
  
"Don't worry Potter, I'll get you one way or another." Draco Malfoy cried as walked away, as alive as he'd ever been.  
  
Author's Note: There you are people, my first attempt at a fic for along time. If no ones bothers to review it, I'll move along and return to writing for school and friends, leaving you all to wonder what has happened and what will happen. Beware though; you'll miss some great action!  
  
Paladin Starfire  
  
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, his friends and enemies are owned my J.K Rowling But I OWN all other strange characters and inventions (Except those mentioned in her novels). 


End file.
